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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Return of Grumpy Chiselarms

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Has noone pointed out the google translate Czech on signs etc?? It looks like not a single person who spoke Czech was involved at any point.

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Has noone pointed out the google translate Czech on signs etc?? It looks like not a single person who spoke Czech was involved at any point.

 

haha is it bad? can you point out some of the worst offenders?

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Has noone pointed out the google translate Czech on signs etc?? It looks like not a single person who spoke Czech was involved at any point.

 

Hah, really? I feel like devs have the unenviable choice between paying people a lot of money to consult on cultural and linguistic authenticity, paying them a little and getting "Homeland is racist" written all over their game, or paying them nothing and embarrassing themselves with the results from Google Translate.

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How are the NPCs in this game? I watched some of the original recently and all the bums and beaten down characters stood out to me, in a good way. They're not there to service the player or the plot, they're just ambiance but it works really well. You don't see 'ugly' characters like that in games a lot unless they're a major character, you know like the drunk guy singing in Battery Park.

In Human Revolution it felt like every NPC had something to say about augmentation, and it was too on the nose, in classic video game fashion. They weren't a part of the world, they were a part of the game if that makes sense.

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Funny little thing about this game that I discovered from reddit via Tom Francis' twitter account.

 

There's a point where you find a document that gives a hint for a safe combination as "a combination of Bromine and Bromide" in an underground drug lab run by two people.  Someone brute forced the password and discovered the actual combination for the safe is 3556.  Bromine is atomic number 35, so that's that, but Bromide is not an element on the periodic table. 

 

However, 56 is the atomic number for Barium.  And it so happens that Bromine and Barium are the two elements that are used in the logo for Breaking Bad.  So the thought is now that whoever wrote this may have been looking at the Breaking Bad logo, decided to derive the puzzle from those two elements, and then somehow tripped over what the actual element Ba was.

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Funny little thing about this game that I discovered from reddit via Tom Francis' twitter account.

 

There's a point where you find a document that gives a hint for a safe combination as "a combination of Bromine and Bromide" in an underground drug lab run by two people.  Someone brute forced the password and discovered the actual combination for the safe is 3556.  Bromine is atomic number 35, so that's that, but Bromide is not an element on the periodic table. 

 

However, 56 is the atomic number for Barium.  And it so happens that Bromine and Barium are the two elements that are used in the logo for Breaking Bad.  So the thought is now that whoever wrote this may have been looking at the Breaking Bad logo, decided to derive the puzzle from those two elements, and then somehow tripped over what the actual element Ba was.

 

That is incredible. I wasted ten minutes staring at the periodic table trying to find Bromide. I got a C in high school chemistry.

Finished this game last weekend and loved it so much I blasted through a second time on permadeth mode and got the "pacifist" achievement. It's amazing how much content i discovered the second time around - whole new parts of prague and quests I never saw.

Hoping Chris Remo + Nick Breckon make progress and have some good conversation about it this week. I think it's much smarter than a lot of people give it credit for.

 

How are the NPCs in this game? I watched some of the original recently and all the bums and beaten down characters stood out to me, in a good way. They're not there to service the player or the plot, they're just ambiance but it works really well. You don't see 'ugly' characters like that in games a lot unless they're a major character, you know like the drunk guy singing in Battery Park.

In Human Revolution it felt like every NPC had something to say about augmentation, and it was too on the nose, in classic video game fashion. They weren't a part of the world, they see a part of the game if that makes sense.

 
It's more or less the same as that, unfortunately. That's one big thing Deus Ex 1 had on the new gen games. The world was much more toned down and believable, which made the conspiracies and technology that much more interesting. Unfortunately there arent a lot of funny hobos singing the national anthem in the latest game :S  

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Funny little thing about this game that I discovered from reddit via Tom Francis' twitter account.

 

There's a point where you find a document that gives a hint for a safe combination as "a combination of Bromine and Bromide" in an underground drug lab run by two people.  Someone brute forced the password and discovered the actual combination for the safe is 3556.  Bromine is atomic number 35, so that's that, but Bromide is not an element on the periodic table. 

 

However, 56 is the atomic number for Barium.  And it so happens that Bromine and Barium are the two elements that are used in the logo for Breaking Bad.  So the thought is now that whoever wrote this may have been looking at the Breaking Bad logo, decided to derive the puzzle from those two elements, and then somehow tripped over what the actual element Ba was.

 

It's not very likely, but could those be non english names for chemical elements?

 

I found this video on Deus Ex really interesting, it's the last (3rd) one of a series, there's two for DX1 and DX2:IW too.

 

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One thing I will say about this game is that on ps4 the load times are  :tdown:

I can neither confirm nor deny that I may encounter them more frequently than most due to save scumming hacking attempts.

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I've barely seen it mentioned anywhere, but there was DLC released for DXMD last week. Or this week? It's unclear.

 

It's one of "Jensen's Stories," which are little self-contained stories that give you a set of augmentations and are much more direct than the main game. They are accessed from the main menu. The first was released alongside the game (I think with the deluxe edition, or whatever it's called), and dealt with some leads about the train station bomber. There was a whole area built just for it, which saw Jensen infiltrating Tarvos security. It was okay, I suppose, but I only played it a couple of weeks ago and am struggling to recall anything about it.

 

The new DLC, called System Rift, sees Frank Pritchard from DXHR contacting Jensen about a potential new job. You are tasked with infiltrating the Palisade Blade, which is that big wing shaped building that hangs out over the Vltava river. I thought it was odd that you don't go to it in the main game, but this answers that.

 

Anyway, I've played System Rift and it's interesting. There are a couple of interesting twists on the regular mechanics, with a decently sized stealth-recommended area that changes in a fundamental way how you move around a space. There are also some light puzzle areas, and the plot directly intersects with the Breach mode. Character wise, I think Jensen is a bit lighter, and generally a bit more likeable here. The plot isn't a fate-of-the-world scenario, and it gives breathing room to Ol' Chiselarms' regular grumpitude.

 

I wasn't blown away by it™ and I'm not sure if I'd recommend everyone go play it, but hey it's more Deus Ex.

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I just finished this, and I'm so fucking angry I'm going to complain about it on the internet. I didn't get the no alarms achievement, and I don't know why. The game tells you nothing about the viability of the achievement as you go, so the only way to know if you made it is to finish the game and hope for the best. Apparently at some point an alarm was triggered and I was fucked out of the achievement without realizing. Maybe due to a bug in the alarm system, or in scripting, or who knows what? Maybe it happened 20 minutes into the game, or maybe 40 hours! I knew I was setting myself up for this the moment I started playing, and I'm not really surprised, because if you google that achievement there's so much FUD going around and weird incorrect hints and tips, and nobody knows exactly what can cause you to fail, and fuck it fuck what a major annoyance this is to me as a shitty complaining whiny gamer. I'm more than 30 years old.

 

The rest of the game was cool! It had all the Deus Ex things I like, such as sneaking around and avoiding detection for 43 hours.

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I actually got both the no kills and no alarms achievements in Human Revolution, and that experience is one of the main reasons I haven't played Mankind Divided. I know it's not the fun way to play, but if that achievement is there, I also know myself well enough to know that I'm going to play it the less fun way anyway so that I can get the cheevo. I really hate that about myself sometimes, but here we are.

 

(also, happy belated birthday, 'blix! I know we don't really do the birthday thread in IB anymore, but I figured I'd give you a shout out somewhere...)

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Thanks miffy! Yeah, it's totally my own shitty completionist fixation on a very peripheral element of the game that ruins it for me. I did go for it in Human Revolution, and when I got it it felt incredible. I can still taste it.

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I have a lot of opinions about this game, but ultimately I was quite disappointed with it, given that it follow Human Revolution, my runaway favourite game of 2011 and one of my favourite games of the decade.

 

It looks beautiful, art direction is top-shelf (despite lacking the unique aesthetic of HR), it feels mechanically sound and the environmental storytelling and world-building is exceptional.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't care for many aspects of it.

  • The story feels lower-stakes than HR
  • Characters often felt bland or unlikeable.  When I compare Miller, Mac, Chikane and Rucker to Sarif, Pritchard, Malik, and Taggart, it's just not a competition - I much preferred the HR characters.  To that end, it's possible to not interact with several characters that MD wants you to believe are important for ages in the story.  You can completely and 100% avoid Mac after the first visit to TF29 right up until the last mission in APEX.  I know this because I did exactly that.  I don't need my hand held entirely throughout a game, but you have to do some of the work in presenting me the characters.  The only character I actually liked and wanted to see succeed was Aria Argento.
  • Does anyone really care about Marchenko's motivations?  
  • The segment of playing as Miller in Breach mode grinds the game to an absolute halt and feels incredibly tacked-on
  • There were major technical glitches.  if you search for "Mankind Divided Subway Crash bug", you'll find a litany of people who experienced an issue wherein you could not continue the game because it would crash when attempting to go from any station in North Prague to South Prague.  This occurred around M11/SM07 and meant that you had a corrupted save file.  Normally, these types of bugs happen on PC, but I experienced this on Xbox One.  It happened when I had to choose between the bank heist and saving Alison Stanek.  I ended up having to perform the bank heist to get around this, but in the process, I lost out on the serial killer side mission.  Also, the game hard-crashed every time I tried to leave the shooting range.  This was also a common problem.
  • The tone of the game was drastically different from the other entries in the series.  DE and DEHR focused more on the "cyberpunk" aspect, whereas DEMD focused more on the "dystopian" element.  It was grim and brutal and depressing, and a million NPCs were constantly screaming in your face about how much of a piece of shit you were for being augmented.  It suited the story, but it was not a fun experience as a player, and was about as subtle and nuanced as a jackhammer to the face.
  • Also, no mid-level boss fights.  It never felt as though the levels were actually building towards something - everything just felt like an impediment towards the next thing.

It's not a bad game - I spent a lot of hours in it and did beat it - but MAN was it ever disappointing compared to DEHR.  I have little desire to go back.

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